Year of Projects 2020-2021 Round Up!

This always seems to be my favorite post - where I take stock of all the crafty projects I've finished over the past year.  Even though personal life events over the last 12 months took a toll on my ability, motivation, and even desire to craft at times, it's still fun to see what I did manage to get done.

I didn't explore any new crafts, but I enjoyed again crocheting with thread:

And yarn:

And, cross stitch has become more and more interesting to me:

While this sampler didn't get completed, it remains a favorite:

And I was very happy to recently finish up some projects that I had stitched up years ago, but had never done anything with:

While this round-up doesn't look like much compared to YOP years past, looking back over these projects and compiling this post does make me smile.  And I think it increases my motivation to pull out some of my languishing projects and get cracking on them.

Thanks for stopping by and letting me share my year of crafts projects with you!  😊

Gettin' there...

Life got a bit hectic this past week.  Somehow a little fire got lit under us and we made contact with a realtor and started visiting some properties in search of our next home.

We've been saying for years that we need to downsize, but in our heart of hearts it's not downsizing we're needing as much as leveling our living space.  In other words, we feel we should look for a home we can grow old in and the tri-level we live in is not that.  Anyway, with a bit of a flame lit, we made some steps in the direction of beginning to think about buying and selling homes.  Knowing us, this will take a while, but then again...  if the perfect house (for us) presented itself, who knows?!?  It's with some excitement and trepidation we dipped our toes in that water.

And this weekend, we enjoyed having visitors (the daughter of a much older, deceased half-brother - who lost her mother recently, and her husband). Amongst discussion of the losses we've both had, there was lots of catching up on our families and family history.  Heartaches were shared, as well as laughter.  It was very good to connect after many years, even if I am finding myself emotionally whipped here on Sunday evening.

All that, and other activities, kept me from actually accomplishing much that was tangible last week.  But that's okay.  Another week's a comin'.

My probably-not-so-mysterious amigurumi gained an arm and about three quarters of a head, but ahead lies the scary part - the face. Meaning, the whole thing could be crocheted, stuffed and sewn together, but its success hinges on me being able to give it a cute face.  😟

Fearlessly, I will plug away on it.  Trusting that all will end well. 

And that's all, folks.  Thanks for stopping by!  

A fun little amigurumi...

I didn't manage to get any crafting done for most of the week until I finally summoned the motivation to work on a little amigurumi project I'd been thinking about crocheting.   Anyone want to take a guess what this may be when it's finished?

Something new I'm trying is making jogless stripes in crochet.  I don't recall ever doing this before, but I'm amazed at how easy it actually is.  I used this video tutorial to learn how to make a "circle join" stitch.  Note: the video is long, and the speaker goes slowly, but you only need to truly watch from 3:52 to about 12:00 to understand making the circle join stitch.  I only use this stitch about two rounds before changing colors.  Otherwise, on long stretches of crocheting one color in the round I simply crocheted in a spiral.

I hope to have this finished next week.  The face (in this case it will be just eyes) is often the deal maker or breaker of an amigurumi so wish me well in that.  😉

Later, gator!